The John Birch Society and Tea Party Patriots: Inside the Ohio “We the People Convention”

An Ohio state Tea Party convention featured workshops that advocated for dismantling public education, states' rights, voter suppression and against unions. Racist rhetoric about how black people who receive welfare "have no souls," that "Obamacare" is reparations, and the persistent refrain that president Obama is "not American" once again marred the Tea Parties' public relation attempts to appear non-racist.

In 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial of Don Black, a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan who would later go on to found the white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, Stormfront. Black was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called “Operation Red Dog.” While a judge refused to subpoena Paul, Don Black would come back to haunt him many years later.

FreedomWorks Vice President Russell Walker told The Hill in August that the PAC's money will go primarily towards Internet communication, get-out-the-vote materials for local Tea party groups and activists, and materials for door-to-door and phone-banking campaigns. The group hopes to raise at least $5 million for 2012